Nick Saban is, undisputably, the most powerful coach in college football.
As such, you would expect his paycheck to match his status, which it has.
Previously, he was the sport’s highest-paid coach, raking in $9.5 million annually through a contract that ran through 2028. The contract, ladened with incentives, also included a $400,000 kicker for each year that he remained at Alabama through the term of the deal.
Then in August, SEC rival Georgia gave Kirby Smart a massive $112.5 million extension that put Smart under contract with the Bulldogs through 2031.
That contract, which pays him a base salary of $10.25 million this season, made him the highest-paid college football coach in the country.
That lasted for a hot minute as Saban and the Crimson Tide refused to allow Georgia to beat them again.
So on Tuesday, Alabama gave Saban a one-year extension that blew away the competition.
The massive new deal increases his 2022 base salary to $10.7 million and will pay him a whopping $12.395 million in 2029, the final year of the new deal when Saban will be 79 years old.
That increases his average annual salary to $11.7 million and puts him back on top of Smart.
These are mind-numbing numbers in a sport that continues to reap big paydays.
Just ask Kevin Warren and the Big Ten.
Yet the news of Saban’s jaw-dropping new contract “shockingly” brought no blowback from college football traditionalists.
And that adds another layer of hypocrisy to the growing pile surrounding Nick Saban.
Remember, this is the coach who, despite defending the right of student-athletes to be compensated through NIL deals, simultaneously blasted the NIL system for doing what he and other coaches have done for decades during the recruiting process.
“The concept of name, image and likeness was for players to be able to use their name, image and likeness to create opportunities for themselves. That’s what it was,” said Saban in April. “So last year on our team, our guys probably made as much or more than anybody in the country.
“But that creates a situation where you can basically buy players,” Saban continued. “You can do it in recruiting. I mean, if that’s what we want college football to be, I don’t know. And you can also get players to get in the transfer portal to see if they can get more someplace else than they can get at your place.”
This is also the same Saban who accused Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and Jackson St.’s Deion Sanders of paying players simply because he was salty that the Aggies out-recruited the Tide and the Tigers signed four and five-star recruits to the HBCU institution.
Oh, and let’s also not forget that this is the same Saban who will be receiving a significant increase in the Tide’s $55 million SEC media deal check starting in 2024 when Texas and Oklahoma join the conference.
Yet Saban’s new deal received crickets from those who denigrate NIL and general player compensation.
Now does Saban deserve to be paid?
Absolutely.
In 2019, the football program generated $95.2 million in pre-pandemic revenues. That was almost 60% of the $164 million earned by Alabama athletics. Without football, Alabama’s athletic department would have posted a $22 million loss that year.
And do the players deserve to be paid devoid of criticism like Saban?
Absolutely.
Saban has built an NFL-ready feeder system, and his players are the dominant reason why the athletic department netted a $25.5 million profit instead of a $22 million loss in 2019.
For all that they do for the program, school and industry, Saban’s players, like him, deserve compensation.
But it should be unfettered for they deserve a piece of the pie without critique.
So now that Nick Saban got his payday and moved back into the top earner’s position in college sports, it’s time for him to fallback from the NIL criticism, recognize who helped him get to where he is and fully support, rather than disparage, a system that enhances the lives of his players.
But if that happens, I’m sure the crickets from player compensation haters will quickly cease.
